It is against the foregoing profile of the
vagaries of international power politics prevailing
then, that we turn our attention to a
phenomenal story in Ethiopian and African
American people-to-people relations on the
eve of the Italian Fascist invasion of Ethiopia.
Among the early immigrants in Ethiopia,
the most famous was the black rabbi,
Arnold Josiah Ford, originally from Barbados
but United States resident. He was an accomplished musician and an active participant
in Garvey’s UNIA. He scored the
music for the Universal Ethiopian Anthem,
“Ethiopia, though land of our fathers…” of
that organization as well other odes to
Ethiopia. Rabbi Ford organized black Hebrews
in Harlem aimed at preparing themselves
to move from “Babylon” to the
“Promised Land” or Zion somewhere in
Africa. In 1930, that Promised Land turned
out to be Ethiopia for rabbi Ford and his
followers. He had been studying about and
following events in Ethiopia for some time.
He had met several high-ranking Ethiopians since 1919, including Professor Tamrat
Emmanuel, a leader of Ethiopian Hebrews—
known as fallashas and in more
recent times, Bete Israel in Ethiopia. In each
case, the vibes were good and he was encouraged
to emigrate or at least visit Ethiopia.
So, he arrived in Ethiopia with a few
colleagues in in 1930 in time to witness the
Coronation. A year later, more immigrants
arrived in Ethiopia, including Mignon
Innes, who was later married to rabbi Ford
and was to play an important role in Ethiopian
education.

In the 1920’s and 1930’s the person
who spearheaded and forged relations of
solidarity between African Americans and
Ethiopians was Dr. Melaku Beyan of Ethiopia.
He started to display panafricanist disposition
since his arrival in the United
States in 1922 and his college days at
Muskingum College and Ohio State University,
long before even rumors of war in
Ethiopia. Melaku’s craving for interacting
in meaningful ways with African Americans
was satiated when he joined Howard University
in 1929, where he had the good fortune
of meeting with history Professor Leo
Hansberry, one of the pioneers of African
studies in the United States. Between 1930
and 1935 Melaku traveled back and forth
to Ethiopia, accompanying African American
recruits for various jobs and briefing
the Emperor on the situation in the United
States. He must have had an amiable and
magnetic personality because wherever he
went he made a lot of friends and the friendships
were sustained throughout his lifetime.
It was those college and university
friends and colleagues who gathered around
Ethiopia’s cause during the war years. Quite
a few of them also volunteered to go to
Ethiopia to serve as professionals in various
fields.

One of the men recruited by Melaku
Beyan was John Robinson, a.k.a. the Brown
Condor. He completed his pilot’s training
and earned his wings from Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Normal and Industrial
Institute in Alabama in 1920, one of
the six hundred black pilots to do so. He
again attended another mainstream flight
school in Chicago where in 1931 and thus
became the first African American to break
the color barrier and graduate from that institution.
His ordeal/odyssey was not over
yet. Even after his bona fide graduation local
airfields were closed to black pilots to
use. So, Robinson got together with some
supporters and financed the establishment
of another private airport, which was duly
certified by the authorities to be used by
black pilots. According to his biography
written by Thomas E. Simmons, The Brown Condor: The True Adventures of John C.
Robinson, immediately after earning his
flying license in 1927, Robinson started his
own flying school in Chicago for blacks.
He even founded an Air Pilots Association
for black aviators, and he launched a “John
Robinson Airlines.” However, the more he
heard of what was happening in Ethiopia
and sensed the indignation and frustration
of the black community at its inability to do something about it, the more he was
impelled to offer his services to fight fascism
in Ethiopia.

Melaku Beyan heard about him and
made contact. Subsequently, Robinson received
a cable from the Emperor himself
offering him a commission in the Ethiopian
army. Prudently, when applying for his U.S.
exit visa, he said he was going to Ethiopia
on business to sell civilian airplanes. He
arrived in Ethiopia at the end of May 1935.

Ethiopia had neither combat trained
national pilots nor combat aircraft at the
time, out of less than two-dozen mostly
dysfunctional aircrafts. With that one aircraft,
the intrepid Brown Condor flew incessantly
on dangerous missions—not to
mention a terrain and airspace he was unfamiliar
with—from Addis to Adwa and back.
He was carrying supplies, fighters and the
Emperor from place to place in the very heat
of the war, when the Fascists were controlling
the skies and raining down bombs and
poison gases. They tried to down him but
could not. Robinson gives an eyewitness
account of Fascist bombing spree in Adwa
where he witnessed the very first assaults
of the Fascist elements across the Mereb
river on 3 October 1935. Professor William
Scott in his book, The Sons of Sheba’s
Race, paraphrases the Brown Condor’s description
of that first day of bombing and
the tragic reaction of innocent civilians in
Tigrai:

When
Italian planes attacked the Ethiopian towns of Adwa and Adigrat
at the start of Rome’s African campaign, Robinson was caught along
with Ethiopian civilians and military in the wanton and bloody
bombardment. He had been sent on a courier mission to Adwa, scene
of Italy’s humiliating defeat in 1896, the day before the surprise
attack. Staying there overnight, Robinson was awakened at dawn
by the terrible noise of explosions. Four large bombing planes
arrived…and began bombing. Many people ran for cover in the city’s
outskirts. Others sought refuge at the Red Cross hospital, imagining
they would be protected there, but it too was shelled and was
the scene of the heaviest casualties. Infuriated Ethiopian soldiers,
anxious to engage the enemy in battle, ran out into the streets,
waving their swords and challenging their adversaries to descend
from the clouds and fight like men in hand-to-hand combat.

Although the Fascists failed to down his plane, the Brown Condor
was shot at and wounded on his left hand, but he still managed
to land safely. Whereas many thousands of African Americans and
other Diaspora Africans had clamored and registered to go and
fight along side their Ethiopian brothers and sisters, Colonel
John Robinson was the sole African American who participated in
the war for a few months. On the eve of Fascist entry into Addis
Ababa on 5 May 1936, Robinson had to return back to the United
States. However, once in the States the Brown Condor was received,
feted and saluted as a genuine hero and the pride of the African
American community. Thousands lined up the streets of New York
and the delirious crowds lifted him off his feet and carried him
for some distance. In Chicago, some 4000 residents lined up the
streets waving Ethiopian and American flags to welcome their hometown
hero wearing the Imperial Ethiopian Air Corps wings. He continued
to campaign on Ethiopia’s behalf at EWF forums telling everyone
concerned that Ethiopia will never bow out and the Fascists will
never stay there for long. He told his listeners, “Mussolini’s
troubles are just beginning, and guerrilla warfare will soon commence
in the west of Ethiopia, especially in the mountain fastnesses
where it will take years for the Italians to penetrate.” Later,
after the war had ended, on Colonel Robinson was returned to Ethiopia
in 1944 as head of a team of African American aviators and technicians
to help build a modern Ethiopian Air Force.

On the face of it, the text of African
American identification with and struggle
for Ethiopia’s cause was neither esoteric nor
surprising. Given the longstanding sense of
bonding in their subconscious for the historic
independent black nation in Africa,
African Americans perceived the potential
defeat of Ethiopia as their own defeat. They
equated Ethiopia’s victory over Fascism as
black vindication and its continuance as the
beacon of freedom it has always been for
black peoples at large. For black folks, siding
with and fighting for Ethiopia was being
true to themselves or to their “race.”

Professor Negussay Ayele is a noted
Ethiopian scholar and is currently a faculty
member at the Bunche Center for
African-American Studies at UCLA. He
has published a number of articles on
Ethiopian and North East African Affairs.
He is the author of Wit and Wisdom of
Ethiopia. His latest book, Ethiopia and
the United States, Volume I, the Season of
Courtship (excerpted above), can be purchased
by calling 650-814-2677.

Col. John C. Robinson, later known as the
Brown Condor returning home in 1936